


Dead Meat

by DesireeArmfeldt



Category: due South
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Hope, M/M, Major Character Injury, Nausea, POV Third Person Limited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-05-30 10:22:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15094724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesireeArmfeldt/pseuds/DesireeArmfeldt





	Dead Meat

Ray's always had a thing about blood.  Seeing his own blood grosses him out, but other people's blood is worse.  Even animal blood makes him want to puke.

In a fight, it’s not so bad.  A cut lip, a busted nose, the blood just reminds you you can take a licking and keep on ticking.  If the other guy bleeds, it mostly feels like leaving your mark on him, proving your point.  Afterwards. . .well, afterwards, Ray walks away, and tries to get cleaned up fast enough that he doesn’t have to think about the blood.

On the job, that’s harder, especially when it’s some innocent victim who’s bleeding, some store owner who didn’t move fast enough when some coked-up punk told him to open the register, an old lady, a kid.  It’s bad when it’s a kid.  But as long as they’re walking and talking, Ray can deal.

Bodies are the worst.  Blood cooling, gummy and gross and _wrong._   Rubbery skin, limbs all weird and stiff.  And the stink. 

Dead bodies.  Dead meat.

When Ray was eight or nine, he snuck into the plant where his Dad worked.  On a dare, of course.  Hid out in a janitor’s closet until closing time (Billy Franconi and all his pals keeping watch outside the building to make sure Ray didn’t slip out before they locked the place up for the night).  Should’ve just stayed in the damn closet, not like anyone would have known, but Ray wasn’t a cheater, and besides, it was exciting, tiptoeing through the empty halls and out into the huge, echoing darkness of the factory floor.  Ray the fearless explorer, going where no man had gone before. 

The place reeked.  Of disinfectant, but even that wasn’t enough to kill the stench.  He’d smelled it on his dad’s clothes, of course; his dad always complained about it when he came home, that the smell clung even though he changed out of his coveralls at work.  He’d head straight for the shower, first thing.  But that whiff of yuck that Ray’s dad brought home with him, that was nothing compared to the heavy, metallic-rotting smell that hung between the giant, gleaming, dead machines.

Ray was already feeling queasy when he opened the door to the refrigerated locker, and white fluorescent light smacked him in the eyeballs, and he was surrounded by pig carcasses, half-taken-apart, red streaked with white.  There was no blood, not really, ‘cause everything was frozen, but it was like being _inside_ someone’s body—surrounded by flesh, but _dead_ flesh, blood-colored and hanging there cut open, all that dead meat. . .

Ray doesn’t think back on that memory, if he can help it.  Pissing himself in front of a bank robber is a humiliating enough story to carry around with him—and even though he was convinced Marcus Ellery was going to shoot him dead, he was never as cold-sweating, stomach-heaving terrified of Ellery as he was in that fucking meat locker.

Doesn’t make any sense to feel that way, but he’s never been able to talk himself out of it.

The first dead body he saw on the job was Jake Botrelle.  Wasn’t the first scary shit that happened, but dodging bullets and chasing perps and people trying to break his head open, all that kind of stuff just gets Ray's adrenaline pumping.  Touching Botrelle's tacky, congealing, not-quite-room-temperature blood. . .that's why he didn't look at the note too hard, just shoved it in his pocket and then shoved it at Sam to get rid of it, get the feel of blood off his fingers, the smell out of his nose. 

He’s seen plenty of other corpses since then, of course.  You’d think he’d get used to it, but no.  It creeps him out every single time.  Bad enough at the crime scene.  Worse in the morgue, body laid out on a slab, grey-skinned, waiting to be cut open; a chunk of meat that was once a person.

Now, Fraser, on the other hand.  Fraser doesn't mind dead meat.  Fraser hunts and traps and skins animals, which Ray has never been able to quite put together with how much Fraser loves animals, but Ray's seen him do it, up in Canada, like it was the most natural thing in the world.  Though also like it was a serious thing, no joking matter.  Which, fair enough, keeping yourself from starving alone in the snow is serious business.

Fraser doesn't get grossed out by blood or anything else.  Fraser licks dead bodies (and Ray doesn't know if having Fraser with him makes the morgue easier to handle, or harder).  Fraser tells stories about being trapped in a packing plant with Ray Vecchio, just like Ray on his stupid dare, except Fraser wasn't freaking and tossing his cookies, and apparently neither was Vecchio.  They wrapped themselves up in dead meat life jackets to keep from freezing, to hear Fraser tell it, and then they saved the day and foiled the bad guy horsemeat smugglers, like you do when you're Fraser.

Fraser tells stories about spending seventy-two hours _hiding inside a dead_ _caribou,_ for chrissake.  Ray's about 90% sure he's not just bullshitting about that one, either.

If their positions, were reversed, Fraser would be cool as a fucking cucumber, not a hair out of place.  Hell, the blood wouldn’t even show on his damn uniform jacket.  Too bad for them both that Fraser’s the one sprawled on the asphalt, soaked in his own blood, and Ray’s the one kneeling beside him, desperately trying to stop the flow.

 

                                    *                                  *                                  *

 

It wasn’t even anything important, just some stupid kids, penny-ante gang knocking over cash registers at mom-pop stores and holding up little old ladies for their purses.  The only reason Ray and Fraser were even sticking their noses in was that Fraser knew one of the mom-and-pops personally, in that way that Fraser knows half the random people in the city for no obvious reason, and so, of course, Fraser had to make it right.  And that meant Ray had to tag along to keep him out of trouble, because Fraser’s a miracle-worker, sure, but he never seems to get it through his thick skull that in _Chicago_ , people carry _guns,_ and they use them to _shoot_ people, and you can’t just walk up and smile politely and expect—

—the kids had pelted down the alley with Fraser and Ray barreling after them, Fraser shouting his usual bizarre, polite bullshit, Ray with his gun drawn and ready.  Not that he was planning on firing on these kids, because seriously, there was no call for that, he just wanted to let them know he meant business, warn them not to try anything stupid.  Fraser skidded to a halt in the garbage as two of the kids scrambled over the chain-link fence that blocked the way; the third couldn’t quite make it and dropped down, staring wild-eyed at Fraser like a cornered dog.  

Fraser held out his hands, calm, reasonable, saying “I know it’s difficult, son, but there are other solutions that don’t involve preying on the innocent.  We can help, if you—” 

—and the kid twitched, and Ray yelled "Gun!  Gun, damn it!" and flung himself at Fraser, and then he had a face full of asphalt and his ears were ringing with the crack of the shot and he looked up to see Fraser crumpled on the ground, red puddle spreading under him, the kid's big shocky eyes and the gun dropping from his hands, and the stink of fresh blood rushed up Ray’s nose and down his throat, strangling him.

He scrambled to his knees, ripping off his shirt and pressing it to the mess under Fraser's ribs, one finger slipping into a place no finger should ever go, into the hot wet pulsing meat inside Fraser.  Dizziness washed over him, spots clouding his vision.  He could barely see Fraser’s face down there, barely an arm’s length away.  All he could see was blood, red coating everything, hot on his skin but already cooling and turning sticky, and all he could think was, _Dead meat._

 

                                    *                                  *                                  *

 

“C’mon, Fraser, stay with me, buddy, talk to me, Fraser,” Ray pleads, his mouth running on auto-pilot as he keeps up the pressure on the wound.  But Fraser, for once in his life, ain’t talking.

His face is paper-white, but not grey, not yet, and the blood is still pumping out of him, soaking through the cloth in Ray’s hands, bright red and hot and wet, not sticky, not cooling, not yet, _Please, God._ Ray's hands are soaked to the elbows in Fraser's red blood, but they know their work and they're not shaking, they're barely even part of him, doing what they need to do.  The metal, meaty stink clogs his nose and throat.  He swallows desperately, breathes through his nose as slow and shallow as he can, because he can’t heave right now, he can’t, he’d never be able to live with himself if the time it cost to turn aside and puke made the difference between. . .

“We’re gonna nail those punks, Frase,” he promises, keeping up the pressure on the wound, and where the fuck is the fucking ambulance, already?  “They’re gonna pay, I’ll nail their asses, I swear, I get my hands on them, they’re dead meat. . .”

The other kids are long gone, but the one's still there, standing against the wall, staring at them, too fucking stupid to run while Ray’s up to his elbows in his partner’s spilled guts.  Too stupid to finish what he started, too stupid to be afraid of what Ray will do to him when—

“Ray. . .” Fraser whispers.

His eyes are open, blinking up at Ray.  His hand twitches like he wants to grab hold of Ray’s elbow, but the movement’s too much for him.

“Right here, Frase,” Ray tells him.  “Hang in there, I got you.  You’re gonna be okay.”

But Fraser shakes his head.

“Ray,” he gasps again, his eyes locking in on Ray, staring him down until Ray shuts up and pays attention. 

Fraser starts murmuring this ragged story Ray can barely follow, about some hunting trip and shooting a caribou and feeling sick about it afterwards, and _It's a sin to kill a mockingbird,_ which Ray doesn't know what mockingbirds had to do with anything, he can't imagine Fraser killing some little singing bird just for the hell of it.  He has a flash of memory, some book he read in high school, a father telling his children _Its a sin to kill a mockingbird_ , but of course he didn't mean it literally, because this was an English class kind of book, he really meant something else, not that Ray can remember anything else about the damn book, not that he cares about the damn book, but Fraser’s trying to tell him something, he’s as sure of that as he's ever been of anything in his life. 

He glances up at the kid who’s still standing there, frozen, staring at Fraser on the ground and Ray kneeling over him.  Kid with a gun at his feet, looking like he wants to fall down, or puke, or cry.  Stupid kid, still standing there, when any minute the cops will be here to haul him off and put him away for murder, except they’ll be too late because Ray will rip his fucking head off, except he can't take his hands off Fraser.

Stupid kid, thinking shooting a caribou would make him a man.  Thinking being in a gang would make him somebody special or maybe just keep him from turning up dead meat in a gutter some morning.

Ray fixes the kid with a wolf's glare and spits, "Fuck off.  Get lost.  _Now._ " 

The kid stares, terrified, for a second longer, then turns and runs.

"There.  Happy now?" Ray growls down at Fraser, who nods, his eyes drifting shut.

Ray’s stomach tries to crawl up his throat—he chokes it down, tamps down the urge to _shake_ Fraser, words boiling out of him instead as his slick, bloody hands keep up the steady pressure on the wound.

“No, damn it, you do not get to check out on me now.  I did what you wanted, God damn it, now you fucking well hang on and pull through this, because I swear to God, Fraser, if you—if I have to look at you laid out like a fucking pig carcass, I’ll—I won’t—I can’t—”

Fraser’s eyes don’t open, but he mumbles something that Ray barely hears.  Sounds maybe like, “Always do.”  Or hell, maybe “caribou.”

Because his lips keep moving, shaping words with hardly any sound.  Ray catches “meat locker” and “Vecchio” and “manure,” before Fraser’s whisper is drowned out completely by the wail of the approaching sirens.


End file.
